"This extension is no longer available because it doesn't follow best practices for Chrome extensions."

[episanty]

The Chrome Web Store listing (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/bibitnow/bmnfikjlonhkoojjfddnlbinkkapmldg?pli=1) has recently started showing the following warning:

This extension may soon no longer be supported because it doesn't follow best practices for Chrome extensions.

Hopefully this issue is (i) on a relatively long timeline and does not pose an immediate threat, and (ii) relatively easy to fix. It would be tragic if this fantastic extension ceased to be available -- it is by far the best on the market.

[episanty]

The Chrome Web Store listing has now been removed:

On browsers where the extension has been installed already, the extension is now being avtively disabled. This now seems to be of quite urgent nature if the extension (which is awesome and some of the most valuable academic software out there!!!) is to survive.

Please let us know how we can support the extension to deal with this.

[erleellis]

Help! This is such a great tool - can anyone get it working on chrome again!

[jaredjeya]

Hey @erleellis, it is possible for the meantime to temporarily re-enable extensions which have been turned off by this change (I think it's as simple as going into your extensions and just turning it back on again). I think Chrome will impose a hard cut-off in June where all extensions will need to use Manifest V3 - Firefox isn't doing the same, so I think I will switch to that. Bibitnow is completely essential to my workflow!

[jaredjeya]

Though also it seems like this extension has been completely abandoned by the creators, so it needs a new maintainer or a fork anyway

[episanty]

Further update -- the extension has been fully disabled in Chrome, and there is no longer a way to re-enable it

[episanty]

For the moment, it remains possible to install a local version of the extension:

A.) Open chrome, enter "chrome://flags" into the address bar, and press enter. This will take you to the flags configuration page where you can adjust the behaviour of Chrome.
B.) Look for the flag named "Temporarily unexpire M139 flags" (tagged "#temporary-unexpire-flags-m137"). If it is present, enable it, and re-start Chrome.
C.) Look for the flag named "Allow legacy extension manifest versions" (tagged "#allow-legacy-mv2-extensions"). Enable it, and re-start Chrome.

This will allow the 'unpacked' extension to be installed from a local directory. The extension code is included in the BibItNowMultiBrowser.zip file, which also contains the file Instructions.txt for the installation steps once the flags above have been enabled.

I have submitted a pull request that will make the availability of this unpacked extension code, and the corresponding installation instructions, more clearly discoverable.

[episanty]

Proposed fix, in PR #74

I have attempted to fix things, with liberal use of vibe coding (Claude Sonnet 5), and it appears to be fully functional on my machine.

@Langenscheiss, if you're there, I would love your thoughts on how this could be merged in (e.g. external reviews, or otherwise).